Temple Cleansing: Inner Prayer

Neville's Inner Vision

Picture the temple not as a stone building, but as your own state of consciousness called by the I AM. The moneychangers who sell and trade represent thoughts that profit from fear, guilt, and old stories you have allowed to sit in the chambers of your mind. When Jesus casts them out, he is awakening your awareness to the truth that the house of God must be free from the commerce of limitation. The 'den of thieves' is every habit that robs your attention of prayer, every belief that puts distance between you and the living presence within. To reinterpret this scene is to claim that your inner sanctuary can be purified by a simple act of imagination: you revise the scene in your mind, you remind yourself of the fact that My house shall be called a house of prayer, and you feel the space as already holy. As you dwell in that realization, your perception changes; you begin to transact with life from a state of reverent expectation, rather than bargaining with symptoms.